How to do everything in JoinedInbox

Getting started in five steps

JoinedInbox collects the mail from the addresses you already own and puts it in one place. You keep your addresses, your provider and your existing mailbox exactly as they are.

1. Sign up with your work email address and a password. This address becomes your sign-in and where we send account notices - it does not have to be one of the mailboxes you connect.
2. Verify the address by clicking the link we email you. See verifying your email address if it doesn't arrive.
3. Choose a plan and pay. Plans differ by storage, how many mailboxes you can connect and how many people can sign in - see pricing.
4. Connect your first mailbox in Settings → Accounts & signatures → Add account. Most providers need an app password rather than your normal one: Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, anything else.
5. Wait for the first fetch. Mail starts arriving within a minute or two of a successful connection test. How much history comes in is up to you - see how far back we collect.

Repeat step 4 for every mailbox you want in the shared inbox. If you are setting up a team, do that after the first mailbox works: adding people.

Verifying your email address

Right after signing up we email you a verification link. It is valid for 24 hours and can be used once. Until you click it, your account stays in a pending state and you cannot go any further.

If it hasn't arrived after a couple of minutes:

• Check the spam, junk and promotions folders. A first message from an unfamiliar domain often lands there.
• Check you typed the address correctly - a single wrong character means the mail went somewhere else entirely.
• Use Resend on the pending screen. There is a limit on how often a verification mail can be sent to the same address per day, so use it deliberately rather than repeatedly.
• If your company filters mail aggressively, ask whoever runs it to allow mail from our domain.

If the link has expired, request a new one from the same screen - old links stop working as soon as a new one is issued.

Still stuck? Contact support.

Using it on your phone

There is no app to download. JoinedInbox runs in your phone's browser, and you can install it to your home screen so it opens full-screen like an app.

Android (Chrome):

1. Open your JoinedInbox address in Chrome and sign in.
2. Tap the ⋮ menu.
3. Tap Install app or Add to Home screen, then confirm.

iPhone and iPad (Safari):

1. Open your JoinedInbox address in Safari and sign in.
2. Tap the Share button.
3. Tap Add to Home Screen.

Honest note about iPhones. Everything works in the browser on iOS, but push notifications are limited: Apple only delivers them to a version you have added to your home screen, and even then delivery is less reliable than on Android. If new-mail notifications matter to you on an iPhone, add it to the home screen first and treat notifications as a helpful extra rather than something to depend on. See notifications.

Connect a Gmail account

Google does not let apps like this sign in with your normal Google password. You create a separate app password instead - a 16-character password that works only for mail, and that you can revoke at any time without changing your real password.

Step 1 - turn on 2-Step Verification. App passwords do not exist until you do. Go to myaccount.google.com → Security → 2-Step Verification, and follow it through.

The stumble everyone hits: if you go looking for "App passwords" before 2-Step Verification is on, the option is not there at all - it is hidden rather than greyed out, which reads like the feature has been removed. Turn on 2-Step Verification first and it appears.

Step 2 - create the app password.

1. Go to myaccount.google.com/apppasswords (or Google Account → Security → 2-Step Verification → App passwords, at the bottom).
2. Give it a name you will recognise later, such as JoinedInbox.
3. Click Create. Google shows 16 characters in four groups.
4. Copy them. The spaces don't matter - they are only there to make it readable. You can type it with or without them.

Step 3 - add the account here. In Settings → Accounts & signatures → Add account, type your Gmail address. The server settings fill in automatically:

• Incoming (IMAP): imap.gmail.com, port 993, SSL on.
• Outgoing (SMTP): smtp.gmail.com, port 465, SSL on.

Paste the app password into both password fields, pick how far back to collect (fetch history), and save. Use Test to confirm both directions work before you rely on it.

You will get a Google security alert. Shortly after connecting, Google emails you something like "a new sign-in" or "app password used". That is us, and it is expected. Don't click the "secure my account" button in a panic - it revokes the app password and mail stops arriving. If you did click it, just create a new app password and update it here.

Google Workspace (business accounts). The steps are identical, but your administrator can switch app passwords off for the whole organisation - in which case the option never appears no matter what you do. Ask them to allow app passwords, or to permit IMAP access for your account. If they need specifics: you need 2-Step Verification enabled for the user and app passwords permitted, plus IMAP left enabled in Gmail settings.

Connect Outlook, Hotmail or Live

Microsoft works the same way as Google: a separate app password, available only once two-step verification is switched on.

1. Go to account.microsoft.com/security.
2. Turn on Two-step verification if it isn't already.
3. Under advanced security options, create an app password and copy it.
4. In Settings → Accounts & signatures → Add account, type your address - the servers fill in automatically (incoming outlook.office365.com port 993; outgoing smtp-mail.outlook.com port 587 with STARTTLS) - and paste the app password into both password fields.

Try your normal password first if you prefer: some older consumer accounts still accept it. If it is rejected, that is your cue to create the app password.

Microsoft 365 business accounts. Many organisations disable basic IMAP/SMTP sign-in entirely, or require a login method this app cannot use. If your credentials are correct but the connection is still refused, ask your administrator whether IMAP and SMTP AUTH are enabled for your mailbox - that is a setting only they can change.

Connect Yahoo or AOL

Yahoo and AOL require a generated app password - your normal password will not work.

1. Go to login.yahoo.com/account/security (AOL has the same page under its own account settings).
2. Choose Generate app password, name it, and copy what it gives you.
3. Add the account here - the servers fill in automatically (incoming imap.mail.yahoo.com port 993; outgoing smtp.mail.yahoo.com port 465) - and paste the app password into both password fields.

Connect any other mailbox

Any mailbox that speaks IMAP works, including the address that came with your website's hosting. You need four things for incoming mail and four for outgoing: host, port, SSL and username (plus the password).

Where to find them. On cPanel, Plesk, Hostinger and similar hosts, look for Email accounts → your address → Connect devices, Mail client settings or Configure mail client. That page lists exactly the values below. Failing that, search your host's help for "IMAP settings". Typical values:

• Incoming (IMAP): mail.yourdomain.com or imap.yourdomain.com, port 993 with SSL.
• Outgoing (SMTP): the same host, port 465 with SSL, or port 587.
• Username: almost always the full email address, not just the part before the @.

SSL or STARTTLS? Both encrypt the connection - SSL (ports 993 and 465) encrypts from the first byte, STARTTLS (ports 143 and 587) starts plain and upgrades. Tick SSL for 993 and 465; untick it for 587 and 143, which is how the standard STARTTLS ports are configured here.

The other fields on the form:

• Id - a short name for this mailbox used internally, such as sales. It cannot be changed later.
• Display name - what recipients see as the sender name.
• Colour - the account's colour in the inbox. Each account gets its own so you can tell at a glance which address a message came to.

Save, then press Test. It checks incoming and outgoing separately, so you can see which half is wrong.

We fetch copies - your mailbox stays as it is

This is the part worth reading twice, because it is what most people want to be sure of before connecting anything.

By default - the setting is called Leave mail on the server (recommended) - JoinedInbox copies your mail. The original stays in your provider's mailbox, untouched. You can still use Gmail's or Outlook's own apps alongside this one. If you stopped using JoinedInbox tomorrow, your mail would all still be where it has always been.

Because they are copies:

• Deleting a message here never deletes it at your provider.
• Marking something read, done or labelled here changes nothing at your provider.
• Your provider's mailbox keeps filling up on its own schedule. If that mailbox is near its limit, you still need to clear space there - copying mail here doesn't free anything up at the source.

The other option: delete from the server after fetching. On the account form, under After fetching, you can switch to Delete mail from the server after fetching. Each message is then removed from your provider once it has been safely copied here. People use this to stop a small provider mailbox from filling up.

Understand what this means before turning it on. After the copy, the message exists only here. There is no second copy at your provider to fall back on. Because it is irreversible for every message it touches, the app asks you to tick I understand before it will save. Export regularly if you rely on this - see exporting your mail.

You can switch back to leaving mail on the server at any time, with no confirmation needed. That only affects mail fetched from then on; anything already deleted at the provider is gone from there.

How far back we collect (fetch history)

When you add an account you choose a fetch history: how much of the mailbox's past to bring in. The choices are 30, 90 or 365 days, any number of days you type, or All history. New accounts default to 30 days.

Only mail newer than the cutoff is collected. Older mail is left alone at your provider - it is not deleted, just not copied.

You can raise it later and older mail really does arrive. Edit the account, pick a bigger number, and the next check backfills everything now inside the new window. There is no "you should have chosen this at the start" penalty.

Lowering it does not delete anything that has already been collected. It only narrows what future checks look at.

Storage. A wide window on an old mailbox can be a lot of mail, and it all counts toward your plan's storage - All history in particular asks you to confirm for exactly that reason. If you are not sure, start at 30 or 90 days: you can always widen it once you can see how much space you are using. See how storage is counted.

Inbox only. We collect each account's inbox. Mail that rules or manual filing have moved into other folders at your provider stays there and is never fetched, however wide your fetch history is. If you want something collected, move it back to the provider's inbox - then organise it here with labels and Done.

When new mail arrives

Each account is checked automatically on its own schedule - the Fetch every field on the account form, in seconds, five minutes by default. Checks are spread out slightly so several accounts don't all connect at the same instant.

So new mail typically appears within a few minutes rather than the same second it is delivered. That is normal and not a fault.

The ↻ button in the top bar is for when you don't want to wait. With one account selected it checks that account; otherwise it checks every account you can see, at once. It spins while it works and then tells you what it found ("3 new", "no new mail", "2 accounts checked, 5 new"), and it shows when mail was last checked.

• There is a short pause (30 seconds) after each account is checked before it can be checked again by hand. An account still inside that pause is simply skipped.
• Manual checks never send a notification - they are deliberately silent, since you are already looking at the screen.
• Automatic checking carries on regardless of what you do by hand.

If mail is not arriving at all, see connection problems.

"Authentication failed" on an account

A red badge on an account in Settings → Accounts & signatures means sign-in to your provider keeps being rejected. We only raise it after several unambiguous refusals from the provider, so it is rarely a false alarm: the password we hold is no longer accepted.

Nearly always this is one of:

• You changed your provider password. At most providers that invalidates every app password too.
• The app password was revoked - often by clicking "secure my account" in one of Google's security alerts.
• Your provider or your administrator turned off IMAP access or app passwords.

The fix is the same everywhere: generate a fresh app password and paste it in. Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo. Then edit the account here, paste the new password into both password fields, save, and press Test.

Flagged accounts are retried once a day rather than every few minutes, so if you fix one, press Test or use ↻ rather than waiting. Any successful connection clears the flag automatically.

Still stuck? Contact support.

Connection problems

Work down the symptom that matches.

"Authentication failed" when testing. The username or password is being refused. Check the username is the full email address, and that you are using an app password rather than your normal one. See authentication failed.

"Connection refused", "timed out" or "certificate" errors. The address or port is wrong, or your provider blocks the port. Re-check the host spelling, and make sure SSL is ticked for ports 993 and 465 and unticked for 587 - see SSL vs STARTTLS. If incoming works and outgoing doesn't, only the SMTP half is wrong.

Connected, tested fine, but the inbox is empty. Two usual causes: the mail you are looking for is older than your fetch history, or it lives in a folder rather than the inbox. Both are covered in how far back we collect. Also check storage isn't full - fetching pauses at 100%, see when storage runs low.

Only some mail appears. Same two causes as above. Remember we collect the inbox only, so anything your provider's own filters move elsewhere never arrives.

"Someone connected to my mailbox" - an email from us. The first time we successfully connect to a mailbox, we send a short notice to that mailbox itself, saying when it was connected and from where. That is deliberate: if someone connected your mailbox without your knowledge, you find out in the one place they cannot hide it. If you just set the account up, it is simply confirmation and needs no action.

Still stuck? Contact support.

Can't sign in

You are the account owner and forgot your password. On the sign-in page use Forgot password? and enter your account email. The reset link is valid for 1 hour. Using it signs out every device, so sign back in everywhere afterwards.

You are a team member. Members have no reset link - by design, because members are created and managed by the workspace owner. Ask your owner to set a new password for you from Settings → Team. It takes them a few seconds.

"Sign in failed" but you are sure the password is right. Check you are using your handle, not necessarily an email address. Owners sign in with their account email; members sign in with whatever handle the owner chose for them, which may be something like jonas-acme. The message is deliberately the same whether the handle is unknown, the password is wrong, or the account has been disabled - so nobody can use the sign-in page to discover who has an account.

You were signed out unexpectedly. Changing a password signs out all of that person's other devices. If your workspace owner disabled or removed your account, you are signed out immediately too - ask them.

Still stuck? Contact support.

Your inbox

Everything from every connected account arrives in one list, newest first. There is no separate inbox per address to switch between - that is the whole point.

• Account colours. Each connected account has its own colour, shown on every row, so you can see which of your addresses a message was sent to without opening it.
• Filtering by account. The account list in the sidebar filters the view to one address. Click it again to go back to everything.
• Unread. The unread chip above the list narrows it to unread mail only. Click it again to clear.
• Star. Click the star on a row to flag something for yourself. Starred in the sidebar shows all of them.
• Search. The search box searches everything you can see - see searching your mail.
• Quick actions. Hover a row (or look at the right of it on a phone) for add or edit a task, Done and Delete. Both Done and Delete show a brief Undo afterwards.
• Marking unread again. Open a message and use Mark unread in its toolbar, or tick one or more rows in the list and use Mark unread there.

Mail you send from here is kept in Sent. Note that mail you send from your provider's own webmail is not collected - we read the inbox only, so your provider's Sent folder stays there.

Done vs Trash

Two different actions that both remove a message from the inbox view, for two different reasons.

• Done means "I have dealt with this". The message is filed out of the inbox and kept forever, exactly as it is. It is still searchable and still in Done in the sidebar. Use it as you clear the day's mail - it is the equivalent of archiving.
• Trash means "I don't want this". It goes to Trash and is permanently deleted after 30 days. See Trash and the 30-day rule.

If you are unsure which to use, use Done. Nothing is lost and you can always delete later.

Deleted stays deleted. When you empty Trash, that mail does not come back on the next check - even though your provider still has the original and we would otherwise copy it in again. We keep a tiny private record of just that message's technical identifier and date so future checks skip it. Nothing of the message itself is kept: no subject, no sender, no content, no attachment. Restoring from Trash within the 30 days is unaffected.

Trash and the 30-day rule

Anything you delete goes to Trash and stays there for 30 days, then is deleted automatically. Until that happens you can open Trash and Restore anything in it.

Emptying Trash yourself is available from the Trash view and from Settings → Storage & plan. That is immediate and permanent - there is no second Trash behind the Trash.

Two things worth knowing:

• Trash counts toward your storage until it is purged. If you are close to full, emptying Trash is the quickest space you will find - see when storage runs low.
• Deleting here does not delete at your provider, unless you switched that account to delete-after-fetching - see we fetch copies.

Labels

Labels are your own categories - Invoices, Suppliers, Site visits - and one email can carry several (up to ten). They are shared: a label applied by one person is visible to everyone with access to that mailbox.

Applying a label: open a message and use the label control in its toolbar, or apply from the list. Remove it the same way.

Creating and deleting labels is done by the workspace owner, from the sidebar's Labels area. That is deliberate: labels are shared structure, like mailboxes, and a shared category list only stays useful if it doesn't sprawl. Team members apply and remove existing labels freely; if you need a new one, ask your owner.

Clicking a label in the sidebar shows everything carrying it, across all accounts you can see.

Tasks are related but separate - Add task works for everyone with no label setup at all. See turning an email into a task.

Blocking a sender

Blocking an address means mail from it goes straight to Trash in future, where it is kept 30 days like anything else. Blocking also moves the mail you already have from that address to Trash, so blocking cleans up as well as prevents.

Block from a message's toolbar, or add an address directly in Settings → Filters & blocking. The same page lists everyone you have blocked with an Unblock next to each.

Blocking happens here, not at your provider: their copy is unaffected, and your provider's own spam filtering carries on as before.

When you block, you can also ask the sender to stop - see below.

Sending a stop request

When you block someone you can tick also ask them to stop. What that sends depends on the mail you are blocking:

• If their message carries a standard unsubscribe header - as legitimate marketing mail does - we use it: the one-click unsubscribe link, or the unsubscribe address. That is the proper channel, and it works without them ever seeing a personal reply.
• If there is no such header, we send your stop text as a plain reply. This is the case for cold outreach from a real person.

You can edit that text and make the tick default-on in Settings → Filters & blocking → Stop request. Clear the box and save to restore the standard wording.

When to use it. A stop request is right for legitimate marketing and genuine cold outreach. It is not worth using on obvious spam or anything that looks like a scam: replying confirms your address is real and read. For those, just block.

Writing mail

Compose is at the top of the sidebar. Reply, Reply all and Forward are on each message.

Choosing which address it comes from. The From selector lists every account you can send as. The message is sent through that account's own outgoing server, so the recipient sees exactly the address they wrote to, with no "on behalf of" or "via" marks. Replies default to the address the original was sent to, which is usually what you want.

Recipients. Start typing and addresses you have corresponded with are suggested. Cc and Bcc are one click away.

Drafts are saved as you write and listed under Drafts. On a team, drafts are shared - see what's shared with your team - so avoid two people editing the same one at once. When you send a draft it moves to Sent.

Attach files with the attachment button. Your signature is added automatically according to its setting - see when your signature is added.

Replies and quoted history

When you reply, the previous message is quoted underneath, as in any mail app. To keep the writing area clean, that quoted history starts collapsed behind a small ··· chip.

• Click the ··· to expand the quote and read or edit it in place.
• Click the × next to it to remove the quoted history entirely.
• Collapsed is only how it looks while you write. A collapsed quote is still sent in full - your recipient gets the normal quoted thread. Collapsing hides nothing from them.

Answering inline - putting your replies between their points - works the way you would expect: expand the quote, click where you want to write, and type. Everything you add inside the quoted block is sent as part of the message.

Your signature goes above the quoted history, following the usual convention: your text, then your signature, then the quote.

Forwarding

Forward is on the message toolbar. The original message is included underneath, along with who sent it and when.

Attachments come with it. Files attached to the original are carried into the forward, so you don't have to download and re-attach them. Remove any you don't want to pass on before sending.

A forward counts as new mail rather than a reply, which matters for signatures set to "new mail only" - see when your signature is added.

Attachments

Attachments appear under the message.

• Images (JPG, PNG, GIF, WebP) show as thumbnails. Click one to open it full size. Use the arrows or the ← → keys to step through all the images in that email, and Esc or a click outside to close.
• Everything else shows as a download chip with its filename and size.
• Download all appears when an email has two or more attachments, and gives you the lot as a single zip named after the subject.
• Images the sender embedded in the message body display inline where they were written, and are not repeated in the thumbnail strip.

Attachments count toward your storage - see how storage is counted.

Searching your mail

The search box at the top of the list searches subjects, message text, and sender and recipient addresses across every account you can see. Type a few words and results narrow as you go; partial words match, so invo finds invoice.

Several words are treated as "all of these", not "any of these" - smith invoice finds mail containing both. Search covers Done and Trash as well as the inbox, so something filed away is still findable.

What it does not do: search inside attachments. A PDF's contents are not indexed - its filename and the message around it are.

"Why can't I find an old email I know exists?" Almost always because it was never collected in the first place, not because search missed it. Either it is older than that account's fetch history, or it sits in a folder rather than the inbox at your provider - we collect the inbox only. Widen the fetch history and the next check backfills it.

Layout and display options

Settings → Appearance holds the choices about how mail is shown to you. On a team these are personal: each person sets their own, and nobody else is affected.

• Conversation view - group messages into threads, Gmail style. Off by default, so every email is its own row. Threading is always recorded, so you can switch back and forth whenever you like without losing anything.
• Layout - the reading pane arrangement, and how wide the split is.
• Messages per page - how many rows load at a time.
• Display name on this device - the name teammates see while you are reading or replying. See seeing who else is looking.

These are the settings team members can change for themselves. Everything else in Settings - accounts, billing, storage, labels, the team - belongs to the workspace owner.

Seeing who else is looking

When more than one person works the same mailbox, the most useful thing to know is whether a colleague is already dealing with something. Two quiet indicators do that:

• A small marker on a row when someone else is reading that message.
• "X is replying…" at the top of an open message, and a soft note in the compose window if you start replying to something a colleague is already answering. It never blocks you - you can dismiss it and carry on if you know better.

The name shown is your display name on this device (Settings → Appearance). You are asked for one the first time you sign in on a device, and you can skip it - if you do, colleagues see another user instead.

This is live and temporary. Nothing is recorded, there is no history of who read what, and indicators disappear within a minute of you closing the message or the tab. It answers "is somebody on this right now" and nothing else.

Turning an email into a task

Most work arriving by email is a task: send the quote, chase the invoice, book the visit. Rather than copying it into another app, mark it here.

Open an email and tap Add task in its toolbar, or use the small task icon on a list row. There is nothing to set up first - the first tap works immediately.

The popover that opens holds everything a task needs:

• ❗ Urgent - a flag for the things that cannot wait.
• 📅 Due - a date, chosen from a Monday-first calendar with Today, Tomorrow, Next week and Clear shortcuts. You can also type dd/mm/yyyy. Dates are read in your own timezone, and a task counts as overdue once its day has passed.
• 📝 Note - free text, visible to everyone with access. Use it for the bit the email doesn't say: "waiting on the surveyor". Saved when you click away, not per keystroke.
• 👤 Assign - on a Teams plan, hand it to a colleague. See tasks with a team.
• Done - tick when it's finished. Remove task takes the task off the email entirely, leaving the mail alone.

Once an email has a task, the message view shows a task line beneath the header with the due date, assignee and note - click it to edit. Task details are shared with everyone who can see that mailbox.

The task list

The Tasks section of the sidebar is a real task list, not a filtered mail view. Until you create your first task it stays out of the way behind a one-line hint.

Each entry is two lines: the email row as it looks in your inbox, and a task line beneath it. Clicking the email opens the message; clicking the task line edits the task. The columns are subject, note, assignee (on Teams), due date - red when overdue - urgent, and Done last, under its own heading.

Four views:

• All open - everything outstanding, grouped Overdue, Due today, Upcoming and No date, so the top of the list is always what matters most.
• Assigned to me - your own work. See tasks with a team.
• Assigned by me - what you have handed out and whether it has moved.
• Done - what has been completed, and by whom.

Ticking Done strikes the row through, slides it into a Done group at the bottom of the list, and offers Undo for a few seconds - so tapping the wrong row on a phone costs nothing.

Tasks with a team

On a Teams plan a task can be assigned to a person, which turns the shared inbox into a simple way of dividing work without a separate system.

• Assigning. Open the task and pick a name. You can only assign someone who has access to that email's mailbox - otherwise they could not open what you are asking them to do. Anyone with access can assign, including members: it is not an owner-only privilege.
• How they find out. Their Assigned to me glows until they open it. That is the entire notification - no email, no push, nothing that arrives at the weekend. Assigned to me is where a team member starts the day.
• Reassigning is just assigning again, and is allowed at any time.
• Completing. An assigned task is completed by the assignee or the workspace owner; an unassigned one by anyone with access. Anyone can un-complete a task if it turns out not to be finished.
• Who did what. Completed tasks show who completed them. A note written by someone else shows their name, so "waiting on the surveyor" is attributable.

Assigned by me behaves differently by role, deliberately: a member sees the tasks they handed out, while the workspace owner sees every open assignment across the team - the one place to answer "what is outstanding, and with whom".

Adding people to your workspace

On a Teams plan, each person gets their own sign-in. Go to Settings → Team → Add member and fill in four things:

1. A handle - what they sign in with.
2. A display name - what colleagues see next to their name on tasks and while they are reading.
3. A password, which you set and tell them.
4. Which mailboxes they may work in - see who sees which mailboxes.

Handles are global, not per workspace. A handle identifies a person across the whole of JoinedInbox, so short generic ones like sales or info are almost certainly taken already. If a handle is refused, that is all it means - it tells you nothing about who has it. Use their email address, or add something of your own to the end: jonas-acme, sales-brightworks. Pick something they will remember, because it is what they type to sign in.

Members don't get verification emails - you create the account, you give them the password, they sign in. Nothing lands in their inbox and there is nothing for them to activate.

Changing a member's password. Members cannot reset or change their own password: you do it from Settings → Team. Setting a new password immediately signs that person out everywhere, and nobody else is affected. Use the same button whether they forgot it or you need to lock a device out fast.

Disabling and removing. Disable keeps the member but blocks sign-in - right for someone on long leave. Remove deletes them. Both take effect immediately, including on devices already signed in. Neither touches mail: messages, labels, tasks and drafts belong to the workspace, so nothing disappears when a person does.

Your plan sets how many people you can add; the page shows how many you have used. See pricing.

Who sees which mailboxes

Access is per mailbox. Tick the accounts a member should work in, and those are the only ones they can see - not just the only ones shown, the only ones that exist as far as their sign-in is concerned. Mail from other mailboxes never appears in their lists, their searches, their counts or their notifications.

Change the ticks at any time in Settings → Team; it takes effect at once.

What a member can do in their mailboxes: read, reply, forward, send, star, label, mark unread, Done, Trash, drafts, search, and everything in Tasks.

What a member cannot do, at all:

• Add, edit or remove connected accounts, or see any mailbox password.
• Create or delete labels (they apply existing ones freely).
• See or change billing, plans or storage.
• Manage the team, or change anyone's password including their own.
• Edit signatures, export data, or delete the workspace.

Members do have their own appearance and notification settings.

Sending as. A member can only send from the mailboxes they have been given. A reply goes out through that account's own server, so the customer sees the company address, not the individual's.

What's shared with your team

This is the one thing to understand before putting several people in the same mailbox, because it surprises people who expect a personal inbox.

The mail state is shared, not personal. For a mailbox two people can both see:

• Read and unread - if a colleague opens a message, it is read for everybody.
• Done - if they file it, it leaves the inbox for everybody.
• Labels, stars, tasks, notes and drafts - all shared, all the same for everyone.

That is the point of a shared mailbox: one info@ inbox that a team works through together, where "has anyone dealt with this?" is answered by looking at it. It is the same model as a delegated Gmail mailbox.

The practical consequences:

• Unread is a team signal, not a personal one. "Unread" means nobody has looked, not "I haven't looked".
• Use Mark unread deliberately. If you open something you cannot deal with now, mark it unread again - that is how you put it back in front of the team. It is the standard move in a shared inbox.
• Use Done for finished, not for "I have seen it".
• Two people replying at once is the real risk, and the reason for the "who's looking" indicators. Assigning a task is the durable version of the same thing.

What is personal: your appearance settings, your notification choices, your device's display name, and which mailboxes you can see.

Signatures

Signatures are per account, so sales@ and accounts@ can sign off differently.

To edit one: Settings → Accounts & signatures, find the account, and open the Signature section on its card. It tells you at a glance whether one is set. As you edit, a "How recipients will see it" preview shows the exact result - not an approximation, but the same rendering that goes out.

Save with Save signature. The signature belongs to the account, so everyone sending from that address signs off identically.

On Teams, signatures are set by the workspace owner. Members get them automatically on the mail they send, but cannot edit them - the same reasoning as labels and accounts: an address's signature is the company's, not one person's. If yours needs changing, ask your owner.

Choosing a signature style

Three ways to build one, from simplest to most technical. Most people never need past the first.

1. Layouts - pick a shape and fill in the blanks. Five to choose from:

• Text only - name, role, phone, address.
• Image left and Image right - a logo beside your details.
• Image on top - logo above the text.
• Stacked (text / images / legal) - three bands: contact details, then a row of images, then a legal or disclaimer block in fine print.

The Stacked layout, worked through. This is the shape professional-services firms need. An accountancy practice, for example: the top band carries the partner's name, qualification, phone and the practice address; the middle band a logo alongside an accreditation badge; and the bottom band the confidentiality wording and company-registration details that have to appear on outgoing mail.

The legal band is styled as fine print automatically - smaller, muted, with a dividing rule - so you don't format it yourself. It accepts text, bold, italic and links only: a stray pasted image or table cannot break the layout. It holds up to 4,000 characters, with a counter appearing from 1,500 to warn you that long disclaimers get collapsed behind a "…" by some mail apps. Going over is refused when you save, with nothing silently cut.

2. Rich text - type and format freely with the small toolbar. Right when the layouts don't fit what you want.

3. Raw HTML - paste markup, for people who know they want to. Two honest warnings:

• It is filtered. Scripts, embedded frames, stylesheets and event handlers are stripped, and only a safe list of styling properties survives. That is not negotiable - a signature is inserted into every message you send, so it cannot be allowed to carry anything active. If part of your markup vanishes, this is why. The preview shows what actually survives.
• Mail apps are not browsers. Complex HTML renders differently across Outlook, Gmail and Apple Mail, and can look wrong in ways that have nothing to do with us. Tables are safe; modern layout is not. If in doubt, use a Layout.

Images in signatures

Use the image slot in the Layouts editor to upload a logo, an accreditation badge or an app-store button.

• Up to 4 images in a row, in JPG, PNG or GIF.
• Up to 100KB each, and 300KB in total. Signatures ride along on every message you send, so a heavy one is a tax on every recipient - and some mail systems reject oversized mail outright. Save your logo at the size you will actually use before uploading.
• Width presets: S, M, L, or your own value up to 300px. Height always follows automatically from the image's proportions - it is not settable, and that is deliberate: setting both is how signatures end up with squashed logos in some mail apps.
• Reorder with the ← → buttons.
• Alt text for each image, for recipients whose mail app blocks images.
• A link on an image - useful for the app-store badge case: a row of App Store and Google Play buttons that open the right listing when clicked.

Images are sent inside the message as proper inline attachments, not loaded from a website, so they appear even for recipients whose mail app blocks remote images.

Uploaded images count toward your storage, but at these sizes the amount is negligible.

Pasting a signature from Google Docs or Word

If your signature already exists in a document, paste it into Rich text mode. Word and Google Docs both carry a great deal of invisible markup, so it is cleaned up for email when you save.

What survives: text, bold, italic, underline, colours, font sizes, links, and simple table structure.

What doesn't: anything active or page-specific - scripts, stylesheets, positioning, and styling a mail app would ignore anyway.

Images need uploading, not pasting. An image pasted from a website or a document is a link back to where it came from. Even when such a link survives, most mail apps block remote images by default, so recipients see an empty box - and if the source moves, it breaks for everyone, retrospectively. Upload your logo through the Layouts image slot instead: it travels inside the message and always appears.

Check the "How recipients will see it" preview after pasting. What you see there is what is sent.

When your signature is added

Under Add signature to, each account picks one of three:

• Every message - new mail and every reply. Signs off consistently; can feel repetitive in a fast back-and-forth.
• New mail + first reply (the default) - your full signature on new mail, and on your first reply in a conversation, but not on subsequent replies in the same thread. This matches how people write: your details reach the other person once, then the conversation carries on without repeating your address block ten times.
• New mail only (never on replies) - the lightest option. A forward counts as new mail, so forwards are signed.

Editing it in the message. The signature is inserted into the message before you send, above any quoted history, and it is ordinary text at that point: edit it, trim it, or delete it for this one message. Nothing you do there changes the saved signature.

Switching the From address while composing swaps in the new address's signature - unless you have edited the inserted one, in which case your edit is left alone.

New-mail notifications

Turn notifications on per device in Settings → Notifications → Enable on this device. Each phone and each browser you use needs enabling separately, and the browser asks permission once.

You get one notification at a time, never a row per message. As more mail arrives, the same notification is replaced and updated, so your notification shade stays tidy however busy the morning is. It shows the count - "4 new messages" - and expanding it lists who wrote and what about, newest first, up to five with "and N more" underneath.

• Tapping it opens JoinedInbox filtered to unread.
• Opening the app clears the list, so the next notification starts fresh rather than counting up all day.
• You are only notified about mail you can see. On a Teams plan that means the mailboxes you have been given, nothing else.
• The ↻ button never notifies. Manual checks are deliberately silent - you are already looking.

On iPhones and iPads, add JoinedInbox to the home screen first - see using it on your phone for what to expect there.

Notification privacy

Settings → Notifications → Show message details in notifications is on by default. Switch it off and your notifications show only how many new messages there are - no senders, no subjects.

The part that matters: with the toggle off, senders and subjects are never sent to your device at all. They are left out before the notification leaves our servers - not hidden after it arrives. There is nothing on the phone to be revealed by unlocking it.

Worth switching off if your phone shows notifications on the lock screen, or if you work somewhere your screen is visible to customers - a client's name in a subject line on a lock screen is a real disclosure.

The setting is yours: it applies to every device you sign in on, and on a Teams plan each person chooses for themselves. It takes effect from the next notification.

Notifications aren't arriving

In order, because the first one fixes most cases:

1. Close every JoinedInbox tab and window on that device, then open it again. Notifications are delivered by a small background worker that the browser updates only when the app is fully closed everywhere. After an update it can sit on the old version until then. This is the fix that surprises people, and it is worth doing before anything else.
2. Check the system permission. Phone settings → the browser (or the installed JoinedInbox app) → Notifications must be allowed. If you tapped "Block" when the browser asked, the app cannot ask again - it has to be re-allowed there.
3. Check it is enabled for this device in Settings → Notifications. It is per device, so enabling on your laptop does nothing for your phone.
4. Check Do Not Disturb, Focus and battery saver. Aggressive battery settings on some Android phones suspend background delivery; allow the browser to run in the background.
5. On iPhone: notifications only work from the home-screen version, so add it there first, and expect them to be less reliable than on Android. See using it on your phone.
6. Check mail is arriving at all. If nothing is being fetched there is nothing to notify about - see connection problems.

Still stuck? Contact support.

What each plan includes

Plans differ along three lines:

• Storage - how much mail you can keep here.
• Connected accounts - how many mailboxes you can bring in.
• People - how many can sign in with their own handle. Single-user plans have one sign-in; Teams plans add members.

The current figures for every plan are on the pricing page - deliberately in one place, so what you read is never out of date. Your own limits and usage are always visible in Settings → Storage & plan.

Upgrading takes effect immediately, with the difference charged pro rata for the rest of your period.

Downgrading takes effect at your next renewal, so you keep what you paid for. Before accepting one, we check the new plan actually fits what you are using - all three limits, not just storage - and if it doesn't we refuse with the exact numbers: how much you are using against what the smaller plan allows. That is on purpose. A downgrade that "worked" and then left you over the limit would be a much worse experience than being told plainly.

If a change is blocked, the fix is whatever the message names: free up storage (how), remove a connected account, or remove team members - then change plan.

How storage is counted

Your usage is the size of what you are keeping here:

• Messages - including their attachments, counted once with the message they arrived on.
• Mail you send, and drafts.
• Signature images - tiny, but they are counted.

Trash counts until it is actually purged. Deleted mail is still stored, so it still occupies space until the 30 days are up or you empty Trash yourself.

Export zips don't count. When you export your data, the zip we build sits outside your quota - exporting can never push you over your limit.

Settings → Storage & plan shows a usage bar and a per-account breakdown, so you can see which mailbox is taking the space. Usually it is one account with a wide fetch history or years of attachments.

A compact indicator in the sidebar shows the same figure as you work.

When storage runs low or full

You are warned before anything changes:

• At 80% - a banner you can dismiss. Nothing has changed yet.
• At 95% - a banner that stays, plus one email so you know even if you are not looking at the app.
• At 100% - fetching new mail pauses. That is all that stops.

What keeps working at 100%: reading, searching, sending, replying, labelling, tasks and deleting - all exactly as before. Nothing is ever deleted automatically to make room, and your mail is still safe at your provider (unless you chose delete from server after fetching). Being full is an inconvenience, not a loss - and new mail is not lost either: it waits at your provider and is collected once there is room.

Three ways to fix it, in the order most people should try them:

1. Empty Trash (Trash view, or Settings → Storage & plan). Usually the fastest win, and it is space you had already decided you didn't want.
2. Delete mail you don't need - the per-account breakdown shows where to look. Big old attachments are the usual culprit.
3. Narrow the fetch history on a greedy account. This stops more old mail arriving; it doesn't remove what is already here, so pair it with the step above.

Or upgrade in Settings → Storage & plan, which takes effect immediately and restarts fetching on the next check.

Using a promotion code

Codes are entered on the payment page, not before it. The field is easy to miss:

1. Choose your plan and continue to checkout.
2. Under the price summary, look for Add promotion code underneath Subtotal.
3. Click it, type the code, and apply. The total updates before you pay.

If the code is rejected, check for typos and that it hasn't expired. Codes usually apply to particular plans or billing periods, so one meant for annual billing won't apply to monthly.

An active discount is shown on your welcome page and in Settings → Storage & plan, so you can confirm it stuck.

Invoices, cards and renewals

Settings → Storage & plan → Manage billing opens the secure billing portal run by Stripe, our payment processor. We never see or store your card details. There you can:

• View and download every invoice and receipt - what your accountant needs.
• Update the card on file.
• Change the billing address and VAT details that appear on invoices.
• Cancel - see cancelling.

Renewals are automatic. On annual billing we email a reminder 30 days and again 7 days before renewal, so an annual charge is never a surprise. Monthly billing gets no reminders - a monthly charge on the same date each month does not need one.

Changing plan is on the same page - see what each plan includes.

If a payment fails

Cards expire and banks decline things; it is routine and you have plenty of time. Nothing is deleted without several warnings. What happens, in order:

1. The payment fails. You see a banner and get an email. Everything keeps working - mail carries on arriving. Your bank is asked again automatically over the following days, which is often all it takes.
2. The retries run out. Your account moves to a grace period. Still fully working, with a clearer banner and another email. This is the point to update your card in Manage billing.
3. Suspended. The account becomes read only: you can sign in, read everything, search, organise and update your billing details - but not send mail. Fetching stops. Nothing is deleted.
4. Expired. Sign-in now leads to a single page where you can reactivate or export your data. Your mail is still here.
5. Deletion. After a retention period following expiry, the data is erased. We email 30 days, 7 days and 1 day beforehand, every time.

At any stage before the last, paying restores everything exactly as it was - there is nothing to set up again.

If money is the problem rather than the card, talk to us before it reaches step 5. We would rather sort something out than delete a customer's mail.

Cancelling

Cancel in Settings → Storage & plan → Manage billing. You are not charged again.

What happens next:

• You keep full service until the end of the period you have paid for. Cancelling on day two of an annual plan does not cut you off on day two.
• After that the account expires: sign-in leads to a page offering reactivation or an export.
• A retention period later, the data is erased, with emails 30, 7 and 1 day beforehand.
• Reactivating at any point before erasure brings everything back as it was.

Export before you go - see exporting your mail. It takes one click and you keep a copy of everything, in a format any mail program can read. Do it while the account is still active rather than remembering after the last email lands.

Cancelling does not touch the mail at your provider: your addresses, mailboxes and history there are unaffected, and mail simply keeps arriving where it always did.

Exporting your mail

Settings → Account & security → Export my data builds a zip containing:

• One mbox file per connected account - the standard format, readable by Thunderbird and most mail software.
• A copy of every attachment.
• A README explaining the contents and how to import into Thunderbird.

Exports are built in the background - large mailboxes take a while - and we email you when it is ready. Then:

• The download link is live for 48 hours, after which the zip is deleted from our servers.
• You can start a new export once every 24 hours.
• The zip doesn't count toward your storage.
• If your account has expired you can still export - the emailed link works without signing in.

This is your right to your own data, and it is a real export: the messages, not a summary.

Deleting your account

Read this before you start, because the second step is irreversible.

What deletion does: it cancels any subscription immediately, then permanently erases every message, attachment, connected account setting, label, task and preference. It cannot be undone by us or by anyone else - there is no backup we can restore you from afterwards.

What it does not do: touch the mail at your provider. Your Gmail, Outlook or hosting mailbox is untouched and keeps working - unless you had switched an account to delete from server after fetching, in which case that provider mailbox was already emptied as mail was collected, and the copy here is the only one. Export first if that applies to you - see exporting your mail.

The two steps:

1. In Settings → Account & security → Delete account, type DELETE and your password.
2. Open the confirmation link we email to your account address, valid 1 hour.

Nothing is deleted until that link is clicked. Ignore the email and nothing happens - which is the point of the second step: on a shared login, the email is the control that makes sure the person deleting the account also holds the mailbox.

If you only want to stop paying, cancel instead: you keep the rest of your paid period and can still export.

Security and privacy

Plain answers to the questions worth asking of anyone who holds your mail.

Your mailbox passwords are encrypted (AES-256-GCM) before they are written to disk, with a key held separately from the data. They are never displayed back - not to you, not to support, not anywhere in the app. Editing an account shows an empty password field because there is nothing to show. If you ever need to know an app password again, generate a new one at your provider.

Each customer's mail is stored in its own separate database, not pooled in one big table. That separation is structural rather than a filter someone could get wrong.

What we can and cannot see. Being honest: your mail is stored so the service can show it to you, which means it is not end-to-end encrypted and we do not claim it is - anyone who tells you otherwise about a webmail service is misleading you. What we commit to is this: we do not read your mail, we do not scan it to profile or advertise to you, we do not sell or share it, and access by us happens only where it is genuinely needed to run or fix the service. If you need the formal version, that is what the privacy policy and data processing terms are for.

Backups exist. Your data is backed up so a hardware failure doesn't lose your mail - which also means erasure isn't instantaneous everywhere: deleted data ages out of backups on a fixed cycle.

No tracking. No analytics scripts, no advertising pixels, no third-party trackers - on this website or in the app. Nothing follows you around after you leave.

Passwords are stored hashed with argon2id, never in a form anyone can reverse. Changing a password signs out every other device immediately, which is how you remove someone's access fast.

Troubleshooting: find your symptom

Find the sentence closest to what you are seeing.

Signing up and signing in

• The verification email never arrived → verifying your email address
• I forgot my password → can't sign in
• A team member can't sign in, or was signed out → can't sign in
• My handle is "already taken" → handles are global

Connecting a mailbox

• Gmail won't accept my password → connect a Gmail account
• I can't find "App passwords" in my Google account → turn on 2-Step Verification first
• Google emailed me a security alert → that's expected
• Outlook or Microsoft 365 refuses to connect → connect Outlook
• I don't know my host and port → connect any other mailbox
• "Connection refused", "timed out", certificate errors → connection problems
• A red badge appeared on an account → "authentication failed"
• Someone got an email saying their mailbox was connected → connection problems

Mail not appearing

• Connected fine, but the inbox is empty → how far back we collect
• Old mail I know exists is missing → searching your mail
• Mail in my provider's folders never arrives → we collect the inbox only
• New mail takes a few minutes → when new mail arrives
• Nothing at all is arriving → check storage isn't full, then connection problems

Mail I didn't expect to lose or find

• I deleted mail here - is it gone at my provider? → we fetch copies
• Can emptied Trash come back? → deleted stays deleted
• Something vanished from the inbox → check Done - a colleague may have filed it
• A colleague's reading marks mail read for me → what's shared with your team

Notifications

• They aren't arriving → notifications aren't arriving
• I don't want senders and subjects on my lock screen → notification privacy
• Nothing on my iPhone → using it on your phone

Signatures

• My pasted signature lost its formatting → pasting from Docs or Word
• My logo doesn't show for recipients → images in signatures
• Part of my HTML disappeared → it is filtered
• My signature isn't added to replies → when it's added
• I can't edit my signature → owners set signatures

Storage, plans and payment

• A storage warning appeared → when storage runs low
• Fetching has stopped → at 100%, fetching pauses
• My plan change was blocked → what each plan includes
• Where do I enter a discount code? → using a promotion code
• Where are my invoices? → invoices and renewals
• A payment failed → if a payment fails
• I want to leave → cancelling and exporting your mail

Teams

• A member sees the wrong mailboxes → who sees which mailboxes
• Someone left the business → disabling and removing
• Two of us replied to the same customer → who's looking and tasks with a team
• A member can't create a label or change a setting → what a member cannot do

Nothing here matches? Contact support - the form is on the Help page when you're signed in, and there's an email address there if you're not. Tell us what you did, what you expected, and what happened instead.